The proposed study will evaluate adult patients admitted to the medical or surgical intensive care units (ICUs) at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). On admission, patients will be randomized in a 1:1 manner to the mini-bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) quantitative culture arm in the setting of suspected ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) versus the tracheal aspirate culture arm, which is the current test available at SFGH.